“Who benefits from the transaction when a state agency is corporatised or privatised? If an agency is sold, what is the price? If it is privatised, who benefits from the capitalisation?”
Leong Sze Hian
“..the PAP government believes that it’s better to have good men in a bad system than to have a good system with a bunch of bad men in it.. However, it’s a false dilemma to assume that one must make a choice between good men and a good system. Why can’t we have both?”
groundnotes
“..the custodians are increasingly speaking a language of panic and treating online credibility not as one of many competing values but as the one value that trumps all others..only most netizens don’t really see the need to buy into the idea of credibility anymore than people who have real hair need to buy a wig.”
Darkness
“Online “civil disobedience” should be countered least it is picked up by bloggers and the media and its use by them becomes widespread.”
Ong Keng Yong, Director Institute of Policy Studies
There were several themes in the IPS seminar that came up that are worth highlighting here which give an indication on how the researchers view Singapore’s political blogosphere:
There was an attempt to suggest that anonymously run sites’ content may not be authentic or reliable.
Even sites that were not run anonymously were admonished for not being fully “professional”.
In the IPS sample, there is a clear attempt to avoid analysing or including political sites or sites of activists.
The term “online civic participation” is actively promoted while trying to simultaneously negate terms like “activism” and “online civil disobedience’.
James Gomez
This week’s roundup and recommended reads after the break.
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